Vignette on Muhammad, arrested journalists in Türkiye | EUROtoday

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Hard punch in Türkiye towards satire on Muhammad. The judiciary of Istanbul has taken the arrest mandates for journalists of one of many foremost magazines of the nation, Leman, together with the writer of the caricature, accusing them of “openly denigrating religious values”.

In the night, the scenario risked falling as a result of a gaggle of Islamicians attacked the headquarters of the journal, making an attempt to drive the door of the constructing, within the metropolis heart on the Bosphorus, breaking the home windows with stones and sticks, earlier than being stopped by the police. The offending cartoon – printed within the variety of June 26 – represents Muhammad and Moses suspended within the air between a bathe of bullets and bombs, towards the background of a metropolis on fireplace. Muhammad greets Moses with a typical Muslim greeting (Selam Aleykum) and Moses responds with a typical Jewish greeting (Aleikhem Shalom) whereas the 2 maintain their hand. As quickly because the information unfold, a number of tens of inferocytes attacked a bar usually frequented by Leman’s staff, inflicting violent clashes with the police. Shared movies on social media have additionally proven some Islamists to interrupt by means of the door of the constructing that homes the journal and enter, earlier than being stopped by the police. While dozens of individuals gathered close by, on the primary pedestrian avenue of Istanbul ‘Istiklal Caddesi’, protested towards the journal singing slogans equivalent to “long life to Sharia” and “eye for eye, blood for blood, revenge for revenge”.

Fahrettin Altun, head of the communications of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the publication of the cartoon on Muhammad, calling the journal that printed it, Leman, “immoral”. “This insult and this lack of respect for our prophet, the only guide of Muslims, cannot be masked by freedom of the press,” stated Erdogan’s communication supervisor. The publication of the cartoon additionally brought on the response of the General Prosecutor of Istanbul which ordered the opening of an investigation and the arrest of the proprietor of the journal, the accountable director, of a chief and the cartoonist. By ordering additionally the seizure of the weekly and blocking Leman’s social profiles. Subsequently, the Minister of the Interior Alli Yerlikaya stated that the police arrested the writer of the drawing, publishing on X a video of his cease, with the brokers who crush him on the staircase of a constructing.

“The person named DP who created this cowardly design was captured and arrested”, wrote the minister, including that “these shameless individuals will be held responsible before the law”. It isn’t the primary time that websites of satirical magazines are hooked up to Türkiye. In 2012 some individuals targeted on the Penguan headquarters, who closed in recent times, whereas in 2011 Bahadir Baruter, a effectively -known satirical writer, was tried for a caricature that made irony on faith, on costs of “insult to religious values”. In 2015, two journalists from the newspaper Cumhuriyet, Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cointinkaya, ended up on the heart of a judicial continuing for having printed the quilt of the weekly Charlie Hebdo subsequent to their editorials of their editorials who got here out in France after the assault on the French journal of January 7 of that 12 months, claimed by Al Qaeda and costing 12 individuals.